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> I don't love that they love pouches. So why did you get them? If the children are so incredibly fussy that nothing else helps, sure, in rare cases you do wha

> I don't love that they love pouches. So why did you get them? If the children are so incredibly fussy that nothing else helps, sure, in rare cases you do whatever works to get them to eat anything. But most children can be reared without ever touching anything like that. I'm sure my four year old gets fed things I wouldn't choose at times, but those are rare exceptions, and at school, after school childcare, and before that day-care, this type of product is just not provided, nor condoned (parents are instructed to provide the child's lunch and fruit for school; parents who give the child a 'pouch' like that do get called out on that). I don't think my kid even knows these exist. > I do what I can to keep as much crap out of my house but some inevitably seeps in. How? Unless your partner isn't on the same page, you are in control, right? The toddler certainly isn't buying groceries.

TeMPOraL 3y ago
> So why did you get them? Most likely, they didn't know what would happen. Sure, "everyone knows" this stuff is not the best choice, but also every parent knows that at least half of what "everyone knows" is pure, unadulterated, value-negative bullshit. Or, perhaps their well-meaning friends or relatives got the first pouch. > in rare cases you do whatever works to get them to eat anything. But most children can be reared without ever touching anything like that Sure, until the first time they taste the stuff. We held off with sweets until our older one was ~3 y.o., but this is a feat you can't repeat with a younger sibling, unless you run some kind of ridiculously efficient home prison. Our younger one got up to speed with everything in terms of food and entertainment with her older sister, by then 4 y.o., simply because the latter was always happy to share. I mean, we probably could've stopped it if we really tried. But this stuff isn't even particularly dangerous, unless someone leaks lead in the production, which is a failure mode you can't avoid even with homegrown vegetables. Otherwise, there's only so much effort we'd want to expend over bullshit fear-mongering. Oh, also, a funny thing: we tried early on to substitute the shop-bought pouches with DIY ones - making various forms of smoothies and sludges and putting them in reusable pouches. Guess what, neither of our kids would take more than one sip of anything we made like this. Not that I blame them - obviously anything home-made tastes like shit compared to commercial equivalent, and even a 1.5 y.o. is able to tell when you're trying to substitute something they want with a fake. > Unless your partner isn't on the same page, you are in control, right? The toddler certainly isn't buying groceries. I wanted to say, "tell me you don't have kids without telling..." but I see you do, so let's use this as a reminder that parenting is high-variability occupation. We both have kids at the same age, and where for you this is a perfectly reasonable remark, it made me burst out laughing. I mean, 4 y.o. is the age where whenever two kids meet for more than 5 seconds, chances are they're sharing whatever food they have on hand...
- grvdrm 3y ago
  I agree with a lot of what you said. It's easy to look at what I wrote and conclude: don't introduce pouches, easy. Be extremely deliberate in what you put on the table, easy. I don't disagree with those things in concept. I'd love to execute a process every day that is perfection with respect to ingredient quality, time-spent, food consumed, etc. But I don't know a lot of people who somehow do all of this flawlessly - perhaps none in fact. Also, what I didn't say is that you weigh what you want to control, how you want to impose rules with how much stress and anxiety you're willing to deal with in the process. Suppose your kid cries for 30 minutes straight because they really want a pouch vs. chickpea pasta you've put in front of them. At some point, is that anxiety-inducing event worth it? Or, can you compromise sometimes with a pouch that helps everyone (kids, adults) get something they want.
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    > At some point, is that anxiety-inducing event worth it? That's a very important question. We've had a much easier time getting our younger daughter to eat proper meals at proper times than we had with our older one, and I think this was largely because we weren't as strict about it the second time around. Sure, she tasted some junk food a bit earlier than we'd like, but she also didn't get anxious about meal time like her older sister did at some point.
    - grvdrm 3y ago
      This is exactly my experience. My younger one eats all the healthy stuff but I don’t agonize over it as much as I used to.

TeMPOraL 3y ago

> So why did you get them? Most likely, they didn't know what would happen. Sure, "everyone knows" this stuff is not the best choice, but also every parent knows that at least half of what "everyone knows" is pure, unadulterated, value-negative bullshit. Or, perhaps their well-meaning friends or relatives got the first pouch. > in rare cases you do whatever works to get them to eat anything. But most children can be reared without ever touching anything like that Sure, until the first time they taste the stuff. We held off with sweets until our older one was ~3 y.o., but this is a feat you can't repeat with a younger sibling, unless you run some kind of ridiculously efficient home prison. Our younger one got up to speed with everything in terms of food and entertainment with her older sister, by then 4 y.o., simply because the latter was always happy to share. I mean, we probably could've stopped it if we really tried. But this stuff isn't even particularly dangerous, unless someone leaks lead in the production, which is a failure mode you can't avoid even with homegrown vegetables. Otherwise, there's only so much effort we'd want to expend over bullshit fear-mongering. Oh, also, a funny thing: we tried early on to substitute the shop-bought pouches with DIY ones - making various forms of smoothies and sludges and putting them in reusable pouches. Guess what, neither of our kids would take more than one sip of anything we made like this. Not that I blame them - obviously anything home-made tastes like shit compared to commercial equivalent, and even a 1.5 y.o. is able to tell when you're trying to substitute something they want with a fake. > Unless your partner isn't on the same page, you are in control, right? The toddler certainly isn't buying groceries. I wanted to say, "tell me you don't have kids without telling..." but I see you do, so let's use this as a reminder that parenting is high-variability occupation. We both have kids at the same age, and where for you this is a perfectly reasonable remark, it made me burst out laughing. I mean, 4 y.o. is the age where whenever two kids meet for more than 5 seconds, chances are they're sharing whatever food they have on hand...

grvdrm 3y ago
I agree with a lot of what you said. It's easy to look at what I wrote and conclude: don't introduce pouches, easy. Be extremely deliberate in what you put on the table, easy. I don't disagree with those things in concept. I'd love to execute a process every day that is perfection with respect to ingredient quality, time-spent, food consumed, etc. But I don't know a lot of people who somehow do all of this flawlessly - perhaps none in fact. Also, what I didn't say is that you weigh what you want to control, how you want to impose rules with how much stress and anxiety you're willing to deal with in the process. Suppose your kid cries for 30 minutes straight because they really want a pouch vs. chickpea pasta you've put in front of them. At some point, is that anxiety-inducing event worth it? Or, can you compromise sometimes with a pouch that helps everyone (kids, adults) get something they want.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  > At some point, is that anxiety-inducing event worth it? That's a very important question. We've had a much easier time getting our younger daughter to eat proper meals at proper times than we had with our older one, and I think this was largely because we weren't as strict about it the second time around. Sure, she tasted some junk food a bit earlier than we'd like, but she also didn't get anxious about meal time like her older sister did at some point.
  - grvdrm 3y ago
    This is exactly my experience. My younger one eats all the healthy stuff but I don’t agonize over it as much as I used to.